lems that afflict contemporary society, and pulls to-

gether an imposing cast of actors extracting from them

their similar desire to advance the policy transition to

sustainability, swiftly and efficiently.

Judith A. Cherni

Department of Environmental Science and

Technology, Environmental Policy and Management

Group, Imperial College London, South Kensington

Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK

E-mail address: j.cherni@imperial.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2004.03.003

The Environmentalism of the Poor

Joan Martinez-Alier, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK,

2002, ISBN: 184649097, 328 pp.

The distribution of wealth and resources through-

out the world is disproportionate. Environmentalism

of the Poor is an in depth discussion of the currents

of environmentalism, the distribution of natural

resources in relation to international development,

sources and sinks, ecological debt, humanity, ecolog-

ical economics, and political ecology. The book

includes numerous examples demonstrating that the

poor are environmentalists (whether they admit it or

not), and the ‘‘incommensurability of values’’ of

nature, human culture, spirituality, and human life.

The target audience is professionals, academics, grad-

uates, and undergraduate students from a wide range

of disciplines.

The first chapter introduces three categories of

environmentalism. First, ‘‘cult of environmentalism’’

focuses on preservation, conservation, restoration, and

nature is considered sacred; second, ‘‘gospel of eco-

efficiency’’ focuses on natural resources, health

impacts from urbanization, industrialization, and mod-

ern agriculture, and nature is not considered sacred;

finally, ‘‘environmentalism of the poor’’ focuses on

‘‘. . .geographical displacement of sources and sinks’’,

traditional ecological knowledge, and environmental

justice. Chapters two and three discuss the roots and

reach of ecological economics, the complexity of

assigning values, and indices for measuring sustain-

ability. These chapters stress that a common ‘‘lan-

guage’’ of valuation does not exist for decisions

concerning what interests and forms of life will be

preserved or destroyed or abandoned and the need for

policy to use a ‘‘non-compensatory multi-criteria

approach able to accommodate a plurality of incom-

mensurable values’’. For a newcomer to ecological

economics and political ecology, the first several

chapters are very informative and transition well into

the heart of the book.

Chapter four cites examples from historical and

recent environmental movements to inform the reader

about the beginnings and study of political ecology,

and the study of ecological distributional conflicts. As

defined by the author, ecological distributional con-

flicts are ‘‘conflicts over traded or untraded environ-

mental resources or services’’. Chapters five and six

further illustrate the conflicts of ecological distribu-

tion through historical and current struggles: man-

groves versus shrimps, gold, oil, forests, rivers, and

biopiracy. For example, shrimp farming has an intense

impact on biodiversity, flood mitigation, carbon se-

questration, and the livelihood of people relying on

mangrove forests. Although, it was touted as more

environmentally friendly than deep sea trawling be-

cause trawling nets captured many nontarget organ-

isms and in particular turtles. This spawned activism

to nets and product labeling that would not capture

turtles and thus, Martinez-Alier asks ‘‘it is more

difficult for someone to the see the world from the

perspective of a woman shellfish collector than from

the perspective of an ensnared turtle?’’ The numerous

examples are a call to action to address our luxury

consumption of resources.

Answers to questions pertaining to the value of the

commodities cities produce and their commensurabil-

ity to the resources cities consume and internal con-

flicts of cities are addressed in chapter seven. The

ecological footprint of cities is much larger than the

city itself, in terms of its imports, energy consump-

tion, and production of wastes.

Chapter eight compares and contrasts environmen-

tal justice in the United States and South Africa.

Including a discussion of how the United States

environmental justice focuses on ‘‘minorities’’ instead

of poverty as a driving issue, which Martinez-Alier

states ‘‘detracts from its usefulness worldwide, unless

we decide to look at the world through US lenses,

applying the language of race universally, and classi-

fying the majority of humankind as minorities’’. Also

Book reviews158

addressed is the idea of NIABY (not in anyone’s

backyard). This idea is truly telling that most realize

pollution or production or whatever development plan

may be harmful; and possibly no amount of monetary

compensation will due.

The next two chapters discuss the players involved

in distributional conflicts with examples from around

the world illustrating that ‘‘. . .social movements op-

pose dams, pipelines and mines built by states them-

selves or by corporations sponsored by states’’; and

the ecological debt that surmounts from ecological

distribution controversies and how these debts should

be tallied. Martinez-Alier again draws from a plethora

of examples to illustrate the unequal exchange of

sources of resources and sinks of waste.

The final chapter bridges political ecology and

ecological economics. Ecological economics provides

the theory and political ecology fosters the union

between the conflict, social factors, and the groups

with differing interests. This chapter also has a very

helpful section containing the names and definitions

of ecological distribution conflicts. The author states

that the ‘‘hierarchy of needs’’ does apply to all

developing countries—people’s lives depend on clean

air and water and soil, not marketed goods. This book

is incredibly dense with concepts, questions, and

excellent examples. Martinez-Alier enlightens us to

look past the assumption that poor are not concerned

with environmental issues and cites numerous exam-

ples of their struggles and triumphs against multina-

tional corporations.

I enjoyed The Environmentalism of the Poor and

through many examples Martinez-Alier achieved his

objective to inform and educate the reader about

ecological distribution conflicts, environmental

movements, and investigate the relationship between

political ecology and ecological economics. Because

this book is rich with historical and current exam-

ples and principles of ecological economics and

political ecology, I recommend it to professionals,

academics, undergraduates, and graduate students

alike.

Karen Stainbrook

1130 North Wolcott Avenue, Chicago, IL 60622, USA

E-mail address: stainbrook75@hotmail.com

doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2004.03.004

Battling Resistance to Antibiotics and Pesticides:

An Economic Approach

R. Laxminarayan (Editor), Resources for the Future,

2003, ISBN: 1891853511, 400 pp.

The collection of papers edited by Ramanan Lax-

minarayan and called ‘‘Battling Resistance to Anti-

biotics and Pesticides: An Economic Approach’’ is a

timely, fascinating book. Work of this nature has been

long overdue because of the increasing problems

associated with the resistance of pests to pesticides

and virulent bacteria to antibiotics in the last few

decades. The papers in this collection are ground

breaking and for the first time bring together various

approaches that deal with the economic aspects of

resistance including the economic costs of such resis-

tance. Battling resistance to pesticides and antibiotics

is important because they are twin problems affecting

agriculture and the health of humans costing countries

and individuals millions of dollars each year. Such

resistance, if it continues unchecked, could threaten

the survival of humankind. The book reveals that the

magnitude of resistance is large and urgent action is

needed to counteract the twin problems of resistance

of pests to pesticides and bacteria to antibiotics. This

is of utmost importance and economics can play a

vital role in decision-making.

The book has 12 highly interesting chapters with

input from 30 authors and is divided into three parts.

The authors are leading researchers in their own right.

The arguments in the chapters are graphically and

mathematically illustrated. The average reader could

avoid some of the technical material without loss of

continuity. Furthermore, extra analysis and arguments

are provided in the form of commentaries in all three

sections of the book.

Part I focuses attention on issues relating to the

optimal management of resistance to both antibiotics

and pesticides. This section contains four chapters,

three of which are devoted to antibiotics and one to

resistance in pesticides. The first three chapters of this

section deal with issues relating to the management of

resistance to antibiotics. The first chapter focuses

attention on the dynamics of antibiotic use and the

second chapter deals with using antibiotics when

resistance is renewable. The third chapter deals with

the issue of treatment homogeneity for infectious

diseases. The economic and epidemiological argu-

Book reviews 159